Proxy War

Proxy War 

 

We maintain… that war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means. 

 

-       Clausewitz 

 

By Gregg Wall (4-30-2022)

Here’s to the new endless - proxy - war… same as the old endless war?  On the surface, and for America, there are many ways in which the new Ukrainian war is not unlike the Afghanistan war the country just exited.  But a deeper dive, and nuance, reveals why the wars are dissimilar. 

 

Before we go there, some updates on the news flow. 

 

Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told Russian state media: “NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”  The foreign minister believes the US & NATO plan to bleed out the Russian economy & military, by funding endless war in the Ukraine (not unlike the CIA’s and former Soviet Union’s adventures in Afghanistan in the eighties). 

 

And to validate that claim, as reported in the Washington Post: “Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, fresh from a lightning trip to Kyiv, told reporters the United States wants to see Russia ‘weakened’ and unable to quickly recover from the shocking military losses it has suffered in two months of war.”  The statement seems validate Russian concerns, and strategically, at least at cursory glance, seems to make some sense.  If it weren’t for all those Russian nukes.

 

On top of the eight billion in spending, delivered and pledged by NATO, for the Ukrainian war effort (along with $13.6 billion passed by Congress last month), POTUS Biden has proposed another $33 billion in spending for the Ukrainian war.  Showing that the US is in it for a long, protracted conflict.  The bulk of the proposed aid will be for military and security spending.  

 

What will be truly interesting to see…  if all the members of Congress, who shouted down Build Back Better, due to deficit & national debt concerns, express similar reservations for a massive US defense industry give away.  So far, the Biden Administration’s efforts to use the war to distract -- from soaring domestic inflation, failure to deliver on BBB, and what appears to be an economy teetering upon recession, if it hasn’t already arrived -- have not raised the president’s poll numbers, which continue their downward trajectory. 

 

Meanwhile, our allies in Europe complain that Putin in engaged in energy blackmail.  Putin has threatened Russian gas and oil deliveries to parts of Europe, due to their declination to pay for Russian energy in rubles.  The macabre irony must be lost on no one that while Europeans are supportive of the Ukraine, they are funding Putin’s war machine with Russian energy purchases. (Not unlike the US sending troops to die in Middle East wars, to protect & seize oil resources, while European & US petrol dollars fund Oil monarchies, that support fundamentalist Islamic extremism, teachings, & terror.)

 

None too surprising, Putin has been waving the nuclear sword, making not so veiled threats directed at anybody or any nation, who interferes in the Ukraine.  In Putin’s mind, the NATO run up to the Russian border, and the funding & supply of the Ukraine’ martial efforts, presents an existential threat; and therefore, for Putin, is, possible, justification for first use.  As for the US, the elites, arguably, need a bogeyman to justify excessive, and growing, defense spending (more than the G10 combined).  And Russia has long foot the bill, especially for Dems, who still believe that Putin cost them & Hillary the 2016 race.  Apparently, the US is fresh out of Middle East terrorists or that story has grown stale, and no longer offers the fear factor for Americans? 

 

Left unanswered, is a weakened Russia, or a strong Russia -- with a productive relationship with Europe, that is with minimal dysfunction -- more likely to engage in the use of nuclear weapons?  Equally alarming, certain members of the failed US foreign policy establishment believe a nuclear confrontation is winnable?

 

Laid to rest this week, and eulogized, was former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright.  Ms. Albright’s claim to fame was her statement that, sacrificing a half million Iraqi children was well worth the price to bring Saddam Hussein down, based upon a pack of lies.  Albright was the author of ‘wag the dog.’  She was also the first woman Secretary of State.  And while America needs more women and minorities in positions of power, it sure would be an improvement if said candidate didn’t have to prove themselves by being more neoliberal or more bloodthirsty, in regards US foreign policy, than their white male counterparts.  Dem leadership, champions of incrementalism, love to hold up tokens to show steady improvement, while denying tens of millions of disenfranchised Americans the progressive change they have long hungered and voted for.  

 

Which begs the question, why can’t Americans enjoy both: greater diversity in US leadership and the progressive polices the nation so desperately needs & desires, and that are altogether common throughout the West?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So here we are…  a shiny, new Cold War, and an excuse for endless military spending and endless austerity for the American people.  Heh, sacrifices have to be made.  No, not by the rich and powerful, who always profit from war and own the US government, but the American people must sacrifice.  Less than twelve months after exiting Afghanistan, America finds itself with a new made to order war.  If you look carefully enough…  on a bright, sunny, spring day, you can see that Afghanistan peace dividend drifting off into the blue ether.  What a very bad joke, perpetrated on the American people. 

 

The similarities, at the micro level, for the two wars, Afghanistan and the Ukraine (aka the new Cold War), are well known, endless profits for defense contractors, the war lobby, American oligarchs, and Wall St.  Ever soaring deficits and national debt… the money printing to paper over the war debt, by the FED, feeds into and often provides liquidity for markets… means endless austerity for the American people.  Afghanistan provided a testing ground for the DOD and MIC… and a resume builder for officers in the US military.  The Ukraine will continue to provide a testing ground, but hopefully will not be a resume builder, at least for US officers on the field. 

 

At a more macro or geopolitical level, the Ukraine war is something entirely different.  For starters, the Taliban do not possess nukes.  Make no mistake about it, the pall of a nuclear confrontation, and subsequent escalation, hangs over the entire theatre of war, indeed, Europe & the world, like a black shroud.  All sides must recognize, nukes are not tactical, and subsequent retaliation and escalation would rapidly spin out of control (Not unlike the result of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the catalyst for the First World War.  And writing of historical analogies, the entire Biden/Putin faceoff is highly reminiscent of the Kennedy/Khrushchev standoff, except the tables, arguably, have been turned.  This confrontation is within the Russian sphere of influence, instead of Cuba).  Moreover, Putin, nearing the twilight of his career, is said to want to go down in the Russian history books, surely a nuclear holocaust is not the path?  As for the idiots in America, who believe nuclear wars are winnable… I have to ask, when’s the last time the US foreign policy establishment was right about anything?   And I do mean anything.  Clearly, diplomacy and negotiation are the path forward, but are the West, and the US, already overly vested in another Cold War?

 

Beyond the nuclear Sword of Damocles hanging over the whole affair, is the reality that this isn’t the old Cold War, the standoff between communism and capitalism… but rather, the new Cold War is an acknowledgement that globalization, markets, and neoliberalism – as a ruling economic & political ideology, globally – are an abject failure.  That petty self-interest, and sovereignty, still matter, and on that score, both sides bear plenty of responsibility for this war.  

 

That’s not moral equivalence, that’s reality.   

 

This war, not like any that has proceeded it, calls into question the governing principles that bind the world today, that of greed, markets, billionaires and oligarchy.  It upsets the entire political apple cart… long held sacrosanct throughout the West, since the early eighties… that greed and markets require no rules and regs, require no morality, oversight, and no virtue.  Markets will take care of it all.  Even before this war, globalization and neoliberalism had been laid out at the morgue by COVID.  This war is Reaganism and Thatcherism in extremis and in their death throes.  Markets do require guardrails and oversight.  Economies and business sectors do require strong, well- staffed, and highly competent, regulatory bodies.  And particularly, heavy duty antitrust enforcement.  Huge gaps in social justice, brought about neoliberalism, can only be filled by economic justice & government programs.  Foreign policy, good old foreign policy and trade, should be overseen with a geopolitical perspective, not by the devil and his greatest sin, greed.  

 

China and Russia both point out, and provide a cautionary tale, perhaps before it’s too late, does the West truly want to continue to build up these fearsome powers with unlimited trade?

 

For who made Putin so powerful, who or what ideology funds both war machines for the West & East?  And who or what ideology make Russia’s primary ally, The People’s Republic of China, so incredibly powerful?  The very same greed-based ideology that saw the export of the US economy and tax base offshore, and America subsequently made much weaker (as best evidenced by our thirty trillion, plus, dollar national debt and soaring childhood poverty). 

 

If anything good comes of this, it’s that this war may spark a green and renewables revolution.  But will that energy revolution prove to be yet another source of conflict, as nations dependent upon fossil fuel exports lash out at the loss of their power, their stranded portfolio of assets, and the rising tide of a very angry population? 

 

Lost in all of this, of course…  what’s in the best interest of the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, presently used as pawns & cannon fodder? 

 

And that’s the ultimate tragedy… woe unto the people, and the land, caught between two nuclear superpowers.  Woe unto the people caught in the dying embers & light of a failed, libertarian economic ideology gone terribly, terribly wrong.  Let's pray neoliberalism's supernova doesn't set off a nuclear catastrophe. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022

TurboTax Hell

TurboTax Hell

 

Intuit also continues to use “dark patterns” — design tricks to get users of its website to do things they don’t necessarily mean to do — to ensure that as many customers as possible pay, former employees say. A marketing concept frequently invoked at Intuit, which goes by the acronym “FUD,” seeks to tap into Americans’ fear, uncertainty and doubt about the tax filing process.

 

-      Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free – ProPublica

 

By Gregg Wall (4-16-2022)

 

It’s that most wonderful time of the year.  

 

No not Christmas, year-end holiday, or even the Big Bunny.  Time to do your tax filing, boys and girls.  Some militantly hate paying taxes and resent the filing, itself, as an invasion of privacy… some heeding Justice Holmes' admonishment, like myself, don’t resent paying taxes so much.  However, many of us resent the complexity of the tax code that requires us to pay two sets of taxes, one to Uncle Sam and a second tax to the tax preparation gods:  TurboTax (TT) and H&R Block. 

 

Some of us are double fortunate.  I pay taxes to the US government and as a dual citizen, do a second filing in Canada.  And I have to tell you, filing taxes in Canada is both a walk in the park, compared to the US, and also feels better, as the Canadian government does so many good things for its citizens.  The same really can’t be said about America, given the rigged nature of almost everything in the United States.  The idea of paying taxes to sponsor endless war, Wall St bailouts, and America’s tax dodging oligarchy is such a bummer. 

 

But I digress, because today’s writeup is on the abject misery that accompanies my annual use of the TurboTax experience. America is a land increasingly dominated by monopolies and cartels, oligopolies, and monopsony, and tax preparation services are no exception.  TurboTax meets many of the hallmarks and notoriety surrounding America’s utility state and monopoly economy.  Let’s take a look, via a quick breakdown. 

 

First off, the software is garbage… likely practiced in the dark arts of the airline industry.  That is to say, the tax prep software is so abjectly miserable to use, the poor taxpayer is likely to upgrade services and pay more just to mitigate the hell that is TurboTax. The airlines, of course, mastered the arts of providing the most miserable experience possible, and then charging fee after fee to get passengers to continuously upgrade. 

 

And Americans see this in utility after utility in America, where customer service is de minimis, that is your problem, Dear Consumer.  This year, I upgraded from mid-tier service to full service, and instead of swearing at my computer for six hours, I spent five to six days attempting to get TurboTax to do its job and deliver my return. 

 

TurboTax preserves its monopoly by spending millions and millions lobbying to perpetuate a service that in many countries is done by the government for free.  And there’s the p-word again, privatization.  Whereby, the state cedes property or services to the private sector, under the pretense that the private sector can do it better, cheaper.  Which we all know by now is a lie. Privatization is one of the biggest scams going, tax preparation is no exception; and to further my claim, one only need to look at a billion or more TT recently poured into stock buybacks.  Last I checked, the IRS doesn’t have a profit load, do stock buybacks and dividends, but is grossly underfunded and understaffed, by design, by our highly corrupt congress. 

 

In short, TT defines and exemplifies everything the neoliberal, monopoly economy has come to stand for: rent seeking; privatization; concentrated economic power; a highly corrupt congress using big biz and the stock market to launder public monies and kickbacks (in the form of campaign contributions, buybacks/dividends, and lobbying); the lack of competition and therefore, exploitation of both the consumer and labor; the misallocation of time and resources; a dearth of innovation; an attack upon the economy itself with monopolistic profit taking; and catastrophic wage & wealth inequality. 

 

The allegations of bait and switch, against TurboTax, have become both so undeniable and well-founded that the FTC was recently forced to take up the case.  That is, TT promises free services; but again, so many find the software is so abysmal, and the taxpayer is so fearful of running afoul of the IRS, that they all too often are forced to upgrade, and/or are denied the free services advertised.  And the TT user must navigate a vast web of services, as they exit the software and finally file, not unlike exiting through the gift shop at SeaWorld. 

 

TurboTax is a tech company, and what do all tech companies do but gather data.  And if customer data is not being put to use by TT to further its own interests, handed over to the US government and the surveillance state, it’s likely data that its being sold off to third parties (although TT denies this).

 

Lousy services, lousy software, rent seeking, millions in corruption paid to congress, failed privatization, data gathering, a billion dollars allocated to stock buybacks for a service that is free in other countries, a billion for stock buybacks instead of employee pay and customer service… another predatory duopoly.   Hmmm, you could say TurboTax is monument to everything that is wrong with the US economy, today. 

 

 

 

 

 

But there’s something more and I would be highly remiss if I did not mention this.  It’s the employees.  Like so many utilities in America, the employees are dependent upon this insidious monopoly, and as result, the employees and consumers face a malign power.  The employees I encountered at TT were outstanding, hardworking, diligent, courteous, and of course, engaged in a courageous fight against a software that absolutely sucks and must burn countless hours of their time.  That’s time employees can never recover.  Time spent away from family, children, and friends, all in the service of greed and lousy software.

 

I know... TurboTax employees, who want to remain employed, cannot speak out, but I can on their behalf. 

 

So much of antitrust law is focused on the consumer.  It’s why Silicon Valley and TT likes to provide ‘free services.’  See, aren’t they grand, they are helping out the consumer.  Except, we all know that monopsony and monopoly have crushed labor and workers, and when labor and workers are crushed, so is the consumer. 

 

And therein lies the paradox, TT is evil on every level: It preys upon the consumer; it subverts and corrupts democracy; with a complicit congress, it transfers wealth and taxpayer dollars to a cadre of elites; it’s part of a cabal of monopolies that destroys the economy with a predatory, private sector tax; and TurboTax literally holds its hand to the throat of labor … ensuring that accountants, moms and dads working for TurboTax and H&R, have few alternatives but to work for the Great American Nightmare. 

 

Which finally, brings us to the answer. 

 

To wit, if the US government is going to allow unregulated monopolies and utilities to exploit the consumer and labor -- all too often in industries that are as dated, and nonessential, as the buggy whip -- the least it can do is provide American labor with guaranteed employment and a full suite of basic services (so as to give Americans a fighting chance against oligarchs and monopolies that crush the life out of them, and their children, on a daily basis). 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022

 

Oil

Note, this piece was updated, and originally stated the U.S., alone, was responsible for $5.9 trillion in fossil fuels subsidies. The $5.9 trillion, for the year 2020, is a global figure. 

Oil 

 

“It appeared that the whole world was one elaborate system, opposed to justice and kindness, and set to making cruelty and pain.  And he and his father were part of that system, and must help to maintain it in spite of themselves.  Their frail human nature was subjected to a strain greater than it was made for; the fires of greed had been lighted in their hearts, and fanned to a white heat that melted every principle and every law.” 

 

-       Oil!, Upton Sinclair  

 

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations.

-       Oil Embargo, 1973–1974, Office of the Historian 

By Gregg Wall (4-2-2022)

 

Happy Birthday, Jack!

 

Big Oil & Gas are responsible for a great deal of evil on the planet today.  And the fact that Western governments refuse to learn but continue to allow themselves to be dependent upon fossil fuels doesn’t speak well for decades of leaders’ collective wisdom, let alone their morality.  In the ‘70s OPEC exercised the cartel’s might and brought the US economy to its knees, inflation soared.  (Granted the Saudis had some help from Mr. Nixon’s, ill-timed, decision to take the U.S. off the gold standard.)

 

Today, OPEC has not dissimilar might, globally, but the US is no longer dependent upon OPEC or the Middle East… instead, the oil majors, a cartel of domestic refineries, and Wall Street are entirely responsible for today’s U.S. energy crisis.  Along with a decision made by President Obama, which we shall get to shortly.

 

To say, that big oil & gas dependence are the sum of all evils is an understatement.  America feels obliged to fight all manner of endless wars in the Middle East for the sticky substance, aligning itself with dictatorship after dictatorship, oil major after oil major … whose actions and policies are completely anathema to the principles America, allegedly, stands for. 

 

We can see the result of global dependence upon oil & gas, presently, in the Ukraine.  Could Putin fund his war, if the world had steadily moved to renewables, methodically, over the last two decades?  The answer is probably not.  Oil not only funds repugnant dictatorships, oligarchs, an assortment of human rights violations, endless wars, genocide, assaults upon sovereign nations, the corruption of democracies & the rule of law … but it is now heating up the earth like a convection oven, so that food stocks & humanity itself are both under threat. 

 

In short, oil & gas are a national security disaster waiting to happen.  It is happening.  The Pentagon is on record.  The calamity is here, now, and it’s pounding on the world’s front door.  

 

Can you hear it?  I can assure you the bottom half hears decades of American energy policy failure, loud & clear, as consumer price gouging quickly consumes & overruns household budgets.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To get a greater feel for the disaster, mostly made by our entirely fallible U.S. leadership, over the span of decades, currently unfolding before our very eyes … we have to take a look at how the lack of foresight, and greed driven policies (as well as, blind subservience to Big Oil & Gas), placed the U.S. and the current administration into its present predicament. 

Yale Environment 360 recently reported that in 2020 alone, the planet subsidized the oil & gas industry, along with coal, to the tune of 5.9 trillion dollars… explicit subsidies are only 8% of that total, with the pollution, tax cuts, contamination, remediation, & destruction of the planet making up 92% of the total costs, currently not accounted for in the price at the pump.  Truly, America’s policy of privatized profits, for a privileged few - & socialized losses & expense, for America’s disenfranchised taxpayer - made manifest.  Please note, America is the largest producer of fossil fuels, globally, and the number one consumer of oil and gas... it's only when we factor in coal, that China overtakes the U.S. as the number one consumer of fossil fuels, in the aggregate.   

Now, take the $5.9 trillion figure - cut it down by twenty-five percent, perhaps by half, for sake of argument (factor in, additionally, America's share of global consumption, toss in some net present value analysis) - and multiply that figure over the span of the last two decades and you get some feel for the awesome power the oil & gas industry holds over the U.S. congress, the presidency, and America’s failed political duopoly.  Perhaps, the only other industry with similar power is Wall Street, itself, which is neck deep in fossil fuels financing & investment.

 

More recently, in our catalogue of leadership failures, we have to go back to the Obama Administration.  It was POTUS Obama, who reversed four decades of American energy policy, by allowing the export of American energy independence offshore.  At the time, and despite the rhetoric, so as to ensure -- not lower prices for Americans and the US economy -- but the commodification of U.S. energy liberty by Wall St, further speculation, and so as to enrich the fossil fuels behemoths and congressional stock portfolios.  The folly of that decision, to listen to the U.S. oil & gas majors and export U.S. energy independence offshore, is being seen in real time by Americans, as they pay record prices at the pump. 

 

This wouldn’t be the last time that American leaders listened to the fossil fuels industry & Wall St. to the complete detriment of the American people.  

 

The news this week was that POTUS Biden will release a million barrels of oil per day from the SPR (the Strategic Petroleum Reserve), which goes back to, you guessed it, the ‘70s and the Nixon administration.  The release of SPR oil could be a major event and reverse Biden’s, seemingly, ever declining approval rating.  However, like most things, the devil is in the details.  If his prior November SPR release is any example, Biden, appears, to be merely releasing the oil into the current system, driven by Big Oil supply manipulation and Wall St speculation (which may absorb the million barrels and, possibly, treat it to all manner of supply acrobatics).  We don’t know.  And the administration and MSM are, remarkably, reticent on exactly how the additional fuel will help the American people.  For all the talk from Biden about the deleterious impact of monopolies and cartels on inflation and the U.S. economy (and on this, he is correct)… the president also has been remarkably apathetic and quiet on actually enforcing antitrust and taking on the highly malign forces of American oligarchy, cartel, & monopoly. 

 

It's with some irony then, that another recent leader, POTUS Trump, under directions of the fossil fuels industry, considered elimination of the SPR… which would have put the American economy under the forbearance & mercy of entirely evil Big Oil and Wall St. boardrooms and C-suites.  That’s right, the oil industry, as recently as 2017, advocated eliminating the SPR.  Essentially, exposing the throat of the American people (already fighting for survival, under the crushing weight of failed neoliberalism) to the cruelty, failure, & greed that dictates U.S. energy policy. 

 

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and when there was a glut of oil, as the U.S. became the number one oil & gas producer in the world… the Trump administration made plans to fill up the SPR.  Essentially, plans (they were never carried out) to backstop markets, Big Oil & Gas, and greed, once again, with yet more corporate welfare.  Yet another example of a TBTF industry coming to the U.S. government for endless government aid & bailouts.  Instead, what did the industry and OPEC do, they cut supply (which, along with Wall St speculation, sent fuel prices to nearly double the pre-pandemic price per barrel).  The deliberate oil supply cuts had the dual effect of allowing OPEC, the oil majors, and Wall St to cash in… while fueling an inflation narrative that Biden had little role in instigating (but nevertheless, will be held accountable for).  The failure that is America’s monopoly economy, and the dominance of fossil fuels w/in the economy, spans decades and both political parties are to blame.

 

Lost in all this is the Green New Deal, which, along with Biden’s more progressive commitments to the American people, has suddenly vanished.  Biden is true to his word, but apparently, only to American oligarchs, monopolies, Wall St., and billionaire donors.  Per Candidate Biden, nothing will change… clearly, a man of his word, but only to a privileged few.

 

At the risk of being redundant, I’m just scratching the surface on an industry that is systematically destroying the planet, jacking food prices into oblivion, along with Wall St. is responsible for consumer price gouging, and funds wars & tyrants from around the globe.  Big Oil & Gas profits, also, usurp American democracy, the various branches of government & public policy.  Leaving this and future generations of Americans to deal with a dying planet and the fallout, as their federal government fails them. 

 

One can talk and write about these things until one is blue in the face, and many have… and yet, it appears to have no bearing, whatsoever, on America’s failed business and political leadership.  A leadership that, often, has no reservations whatsoever about playing up an inflation narrative, as cover for greed and monopolistic price gouging.   For as long as we let fossil fuels, greed, and Wall St govern the nation and its economy, Americans will continue to face a malevolent force, entirely inimical to their interests, and a collision course with an existential threat.

 

Until America wakes up and installs a green energy grid, there will be no respite, no mercy, from the gun Big Oil and Wall Street holds to the nation’s head.  And what is true in America appears to be equally true throughout many Western economies and governments. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022